The Motion Picture Association of America’s selection of Chris Dodd as its new head is a puzzling move.

Obviously, Dodd brings no industry expertise to the table, but this is immaterial. The job was shaped by the long tenure of Jack Valenti, LBJ’s political fixer par excellence, who functioned as the industry’s ambassador to Washington, using its wealth to influence the tribunes of the people and its glamor to seduce them.

Valenti’s successor was former Democratic Congressman and ex-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, who decided a year ago that he wanted to spend more time on other interests, without waiting for the end of his contract. The stories at the time said the industry thought his anti-piracy efforts insufficient, but it is hard to know in what way, and he did last six years in the job.

Glickman’s unglamorous Kansas demeanor seems a more probable friction point, and Politico speculated that his reasonableness may have hurt him. Valenti was fiercely partisan and the industry liked that, and may have grown impatient with anything less. This explanation makes sense. Hollywood is a land of emotion and illusion, not logic and reality, and on the intellectual property and social issues at the top of its priority list, it is fiercely self-righteous and contemptuous of all dissent.

In this framework, Dodd makes sense, because he certainly fits the mold of being self-righteous, contemptuous, and devoted to emotion and illusion rather than logic and reality.

No one is more loathed by Republicans, whether of the Tea Party stripe or from the intellectual free market wing. Both groups regard Dodd as bearing unique responsibility for the corruption that is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the consequent national financial disaster, and a financial reform bill that was an ill-considered, interest-group driven hodgepodge for which we will be paying for decades.

For those who focus on social issues and the moral decline of America, Dodd is remembered as the bottom slice of bread in Ted Kennedy’s waitress sandwich, together with other escapades of the congressional rat pack. It was a long time ago, but search engines have good memory.

Big Government was the first conservative blogsite off the mark with “Corrupt Government-Hollywood Complex Worsens With MPAA Appointment of Chris Dodd,” which emphasized Hollywood’s political imbalance and various past favors the government has done for the industry.

The story did not mention the two big areas, though. One is the issue of subsidies given for motion picture production by various states. Michael Kinsley wrote this week in Politico:

New Mexico under Gov. Richardson was a pioneer in this field. In 2002, it began offering a credit of 15 percent — later increased to 25 percent — of the cost of making a movie in New Mexico (not counting star salaries and the mite paid to writers). Now, 42 states have followed its lead. New York has gone as high as 30 percent. These credits can generally be transferred, saved or used for other things, so it’s no problem if a particular movie doesn’t make money.

For the Tea Parties, or for Republican governors, such programs are the equivalent of trolling a steak though a dog pound. So let’s see, who shall we send out to defend the steak? Why not Chris Dodd? What could go wrong?

Beyond its greed for direct subsidies, Hollywood’s big issue with the government is the protection of intellectual property. On this issue, progressives are split. The world of legal academia, lefties to a man/woman, is quite anti-IP. Silicon Valley and its clones like patents, with some reservations, but are skeptical of copyright because the more material people can access the more hardware and bandwidth they need. The 800-pound gorilla Google wants everything, including content, to be a commodity so that money is made only by attaching ads. Its position is to talk about how much it loves intellectual property in content, while opposing all efforts to make enforcement of IP rights practicable.

15 Comments, 11 Threads

1.
Greyhawk

A very clever and insightful piece. Chris Dodd Is A Corrupt Scoundrel and should be exposed, indicted, prosecuted, tried and convicted and sent to prison for the rest of his sorry life along with other Ponzi Scheme artists such as Bernie Madoff. If Madoff is in prison for his Minor Ponzi Scheme, Chris Dodd and numerous other U.S. Congressmen and Women such as Nancy Pelosi, ought to be In Prison For Life for their Much Larger Ponzi Schemes that they have been getting by with for decades using The U.S. Treasury as their Piggy Bank. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Come To Mind as do all The Green Intitiatives and the Deals Big Government Has Made with GE, Google, IBM and others.

You forgot to mention Dodd’s hair. He may be a first-class scoundrel and corrupt enough to make an Egyptian Customs officer blush, but admit what is the plain truth…between him and Virginia’s John Warner, they had the best heads of hair in the Senate, probably the best in the entire ranks of Federal elected officials.

(And yes, I DO think that that had something to do with his appointment).

Well, Hollywood is filled with phony people, so Dodd will fit right in. Hey, a guy has got to make a living, so why not take advantage of the people living in the land a fruits and nuts? My only question is, will Dodd be forced to actually live in California, with its sky-high taxes, or will he be allowed to continue living in Connecticut? Well, if he does to the Motion Picture Association of America what he’s done to this country, at least they won’t be around much longer.

“Hollywood has never supported property rights as a general institution. It favors its own property, period. In terms of protecting land, or the right to make a living, or sunk investment capital, or anything else, Hollywood never met a progressive program of rapine and plunder that it would not support.”

BRAVO!, Mr. DeLong. The Hollyweird philosophy defined.

Although, I disagree with your final conclusion of “Why make your allies question your value?”

Because their values are already unquestioned. See: hollyweird philosophy.
Because people, especially politicians, have a short memory.
Because lots n lots of campaign money makes those memories even shorter.
Because power – whether Dem or Repub – loves attention & prestige. Hollyweird can provide both.

And Dodd had already proved to be a useful idiot for Hollyweird with the onerous Frank-Dodd financial regulation law. In that federal law, there was a special interest provision to kill the Hollywood Stock Exchange.

“Rich Jacobs, president of the Hollywood Stock Exchange, says that some studios wanted it killed because they didn’t want public discussion of their plans.

Dodd and Kennedy the two corrupt amoral Irish drunks of the American State. Dodd has a million dollar castle in Ireland purchased with kickbacks and corrupt money. He has no morals and for him to designate what kind of film one should see is a bigger joke. He and his buddy Teddy were known as the whoremongers of captial hill. Can the US government ever be a bigger joke than it is right now